Monday September 30
ACCADEMIA UNDER ATTACK: From visas being denied to a clampdown on sharing of research, American academia “is suddenly finding itself a central target of new security laws and regulations. To some, the greater scrutiny is natural, given that universities are home to many foreign students and much potentially sensitive research. But as fall semester gets under way, university scientists worry that freedom of inquiry, open access, and internationalization – long valued in US higher education – are at risk.” Christian Science Monitor 09/29/02
FIXING THE VISA PROBLEM: As visa delays reult in cancellation of more and more arts events around America, some arts leaders propose a special category of visa to expedite artist entry. “Artists who have been here 15 times and been written up in every major paper – to all of a sudden start questioning their backgrounds is a little backward. I think having a separate category for artists is a practical step.” Los Angeles Times 09/30/02
- ANOTHER VISA DENIED – CONTEMPT FOR CULTURE? “Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian filmmaker who is widely considered one of the world’s greatest living directors, has been denied a visa to enter the United States. Kiarostami had been invited to attend the New York Film Festival, where his new movie Ten will premiere on Sunday, and then to lecture at Harvard and at Ohio University. To many people working in the arts, both in the U.S. and abroad, the decision will inevitably be seen as symbolizing the Bush administration’s perceived disdain for cultural affairs and the left-leaning elite groups concerned with them.” Salon 09/27/02
VILAR ON PHILANTHROPY: Earlier this month Alberto Vilar gave a speech on arts philanthropy: “From my experience, the biggest single negative force in philanthropy is bad journalism. I attribute the press’s negativism partly to a misunderstanding that has a cultural and historical basis, in the very nature of private philanthropy. Journalists in Europe have been culturally raised to believe that supporting the arts is the express responsibility of government. Hence, many unfounded charges arise because of this, namely, that the private patron will interfere artistically. When you think about it, this accusation actually insults the recipients of donor gifts.” The transcript of the entire speech is found here. La Scena Musicale 09/29/02
Sunday September 29
ART OF SCIENCE: Many artists of all sorts are making arts about science these days. Why? “Stories about scientists doing science offer the chance to understand the seemingly impossible-to-understand, if only vicariously. Just as a certain kind of true-adventure story allows the armchair explorer to travel to the ends of the earth and test the limits of human physical endurance, so dramatic narratives involving the scientific process invite us to live inside the minds that are trying to scale the heights of intellectual achievement.” The New York Times 09/29/02
Friday September 27
COPYRIGHT CHALLENGE: The US Supreme Court is about to hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which was enacted in 1998 with strong support from Hollywood’s politically powerful studios. The law extended the length of copyrights for an additional 20 years (or more in certain cases) and gave new protections to corporations that own copyrights. Opponents – which include dozens of the nation’s leading law professors, several library groups, 17 prominent economists, and a coalition of both liberal and conservative political action groups – say it serves no legitimate public purpose, violates the clear intentions of our nation’s founders regarding copyrights and is unconstitutional.” San Francisco Chronicle 09/26/02
AMERICA’S VISA MESS: The American government’s visa policies are so bogged down and eratic, performing arts organizations are having to cancel planned performances with foreign artists. “It’s not as if you can hand people a handbook. These security procedures change from day to day. It’s a huge issue for people in our field. There is an international meeting of world-music people in Germany next month and this will be the number-one topic of discussion.” Philadelphia Inquirer 09/26/02
DAVIS’ NEW CULTURAL CENTER: Davis, California gets a new cultural center “The $57 million center features a beautiful 1,800-seat theater that can accommodate everything from opera and dance to symphony concerts, rock shows and films.” San Francisco Chronicle 09/26/02
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR PIRACY: Does fighting piracy of intellectual property make good business sense? Maybe not. “The argument for allowing piracy boils down to two words: network effects. Without a critical mass of users, most software products tend to wither and die. Conversely, the more users a software product acquires, particularly a consumer-oriented software product, the more valuable it becomes.” Salon 09/26/02
Thursday September 26
THE TICKETMASTER TWO-STEP: Anyone who has ever purchased concert or sports passes from juggernaut ticket-broker Ticketmaster is familiar with the company’s policy of charging exorbitant fees for ‘handling’ and ‘processing.’ But what happens when a concert is cancelled and Ticketmaster has to issue refunds? It turns out that all those extra fees are non-refundable, assuring that the broker turns a sizable profit even as promoters eat their costs and customers take it in the shorts. Denver Post 09/26/02
CELL PHONICIDE: New York’s city council debates a ban on using cellphones at public performances. Supporters of the legislation says that “if patrons knew that they could be ejected or have to pay a fine or have to think about going through the humiliation of dealing with that, it would at least limit the number of people that continue to do it.” The New York Times 09/25/02
Wednesday September 25
GOVERNOR GENERAL AWARDS: Canada has announced the winners of this year’s Governor General Awards for the performing arts. “Six Canadians received the honour yesterday, including the National Ballet of Canada’s Karen Kain, the jazz great Phil Nimmons, and the Guess Who, this country’s first home-grown rock band to win international acclaim.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/25/02
Tuesday September 24
BANKERS ON BOARD: As times get tougher for arts organizations, boards of directors are taking a more interventionalist attitude. In Sydney, Zurich and London recently, the artistic sides have been sacked by the boardroom overseers. “What boards around the world seem to want now is more predictable balance-sheets. Even if it sometimes means compromising that less definable commodity: artistic enterprise.” Financial Times 09/23/02
CLEANING UP DODGE: A Republican party “Leadership Council” in Texas is on a cultural crusade. So far it has succeeded in getting a plaster fig leaf added to a replica of a statue of David, remove some art from an Italian restaurant, “persuaded commissioners to use an Internet filter to screen computers at the library for pornography and to put plaques reading ‘In God We Trust’ in county libraries.” Houston Chronicle 09/24/02
BUILT-IN DEFICIT? The Ordway Center, St. Paul Minnesota’s largest performing arts venue, has racked up another deficit – not a large one, but the latest in a string of cash shortfalls that have characterized most of the hall’s 18 years. Is a deficit built into the place? “These customary deficits must be fixed. The consistency of these deficits over the life of the Ordway is startling. You just can’t do business like this.” The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 09/24/02
- TURNING IT AROUND: The Ordway has a new man in charge. “His name is David Galligan, and as the new president and CEO of St. Paul’s most visible cultural address, he’ll be a key player in the city’s plans for a continuing artistic renaissance. At the Ordway, he’ll wrangle a troublesome budget of $15 million, referee a cantankerous group of resident arts organizations and try to reconcile the building’s historic mission as a home for local arts groups with its more recent role as a producer and presenter of entertainments.” St. Paul Pioneer Press 09/22/02
Sunday September 22
PERSONAL SEAT LICENSES, ANYONE? Sports franchises long ago learned that ticket sales are simply not dependable enough to serve as your organization’s major source of income, and moved towards sponsorship deals, ‘seat licenses,’ and luxury box rentals as primary revenue streams. But arts groups continue to struggle annually with the problem of how to get enough butts in the seats to keep the bottom line at bay. Worse, there seems to be a dramatic nationwide move towards spur-of-the-moment ticket buying which is eroding subscription sales and putting tremendous pressure on marketing departments. Accordingly, many arts organizations are reinventing the way they sell tickets, with shorter subscriptions and deeper discounts for patrons. Boston Globe 09/22/02
CENSORSHIP OR PUBLIC GOOD? The debate over the explicit French film Fat Girl has made its way into the Canadian courts, and Ontario’s law governing allowable censorship of ‘objectionable material’ hangs in the balance. The plaintiffs “will argue that the Ontario board misapplied the Theatres Act legislation and that the act itself is an infringement on the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If Martin’s constitutional challenge is successful — something the Ontario government will do all in its power to prevent — it will have major ramifications on the sundry classification/review/censor boards across the country.” The Globe & Mail (first item) 09/21/02
LEHRER TO GET LINCOLN CENTER GIG: “Peter M. Lehrer, a construction executive, is expected to be named chairman of Lincoln Center’s ambitious redevelopment project next week. As chairman of the Lincoln Center Constituent Development Project Inc., Mr. Lehrer will oversee the extensive plans to improve the center’s halls and public spaces, a $1.2 billion project that in its early stages was complicated by in-fighting among the center’s constituents. Mr. Lehrer, 60, a co-founder of the large New York construction management firm Lehrer McGovern, replaces Marshall Rose, a real estate executive who stepped down in October, several months earlier than had been expected.” The New York Times 09/21/02
Friday September 20
HOW/WHY/WHAT WE LEARN: What do we expect of our universities? “Up to the middle of the last century, we asked higher education to provide basic and professional education for young people, to discover and preserve the knowledge of the past, and, especially in the sciences, to create new knowledge. We thought of knowledge, however, in a unitary fashion, and did not distinguish as sharply as we do today between the practical and useless kinds Knowledge grew slowly and incrementally, and we were mostly content to leave its creation to university academics and industrial laboratories. But all of that has changed.” Chronicle of Higher Education 09/16/02
MICHIGAN ARTS FUNDING SURVIVES: While many state arts agencies have taken big cuts – Massachusetts cut its arts budget by 60 percent, and states like Colorado and California also took huge hits – Michigan’s state arts council has escaped largely intact despite a sluggish economy. The state just awarded $22.6 million in grants, a drop of $1 million, or 4 percent, compared with last year. Detroit Free Press 09/14/02
Thursday September 19
MORE VISA WOES: Another American arts event marred by visa problems. The World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles has lost a couple of its top attractions because artists weren’t able to get their visas on time. “We got a head start, got all the papers in line, but at this point it doesn’t matter when the artists are trying to travel from nations identified as trouble spots.” Los Angeles Times 09/18/02
BUSH SIGNS BILL TO EXPAND KENNEDY CENTER: President Bush signs a bill authorizing expansion of the Kennedy Center. The new “open pedestrian plaza, stretching east from the center toward the State Department, would accommodate two new buildings under the center’s plan. One would be a museum devoted to the history of the performing arts; the other would contain rehearsal halls and offices.” Now the Kennedy Center must raise the $250 million needed to build the project. Washington Post 09/19/02
FRANCE FALLS BEHIND: A report getting great attention in France documents the poor state of the visual arts in France. “The report confirmed what was already widely known: the French art scene has largely lost the influence which it enjoyed during the first half of the twentieth century. Worse, it is flagging fast compared with Germany, and even England.” Along with numbers to show the decline, comes some speculation on reasons French art doesn’t travel, including the irea that French art is “too intellectual to be rated beyond the French border.” The Art Newspaper 09/15/02
Wednesday September 18
SURVEY – ARTISTS HURT BY 9/11: A survey of New York artists says artists have had a tough time since 9/11. “According the survey, four out of five artists have suffered a loss of income since last September, with the average loss in individual income being 46 percent. As a result, artists are increasingly forced to dip into their savings and to increase their debt load; 60 percent of survey respondents reported taking on more debt in the last year.” The New York Times 09/17/02
Tuesday September 17
NOW HERE’S AN ARTS POLICY (NOT): London mayor Ken Livingston – like many politicians these days – wants to be a player in the arts industry (after all, it’s non-polluting and makes money). But politicians have such a wide definition of culture as to make the word almost meaningless, write Norman Lebrecht. “The best a city can do for culture is to foster a climate where it can speak freely and reach millions. That requires a vibrant press (unlike New York, where debate is monop olised by the Times), a modicum of prosperity and a reliable transport system – unlike London, where many of us miss the first half of shows through getting stuck in the Tube or the traffic.” London Evening Standard 09/17/02
THE HITLER INDUSTRY: Why all the recent fascination with Hitler? “A rash of projects featuring the dictator are currently in the works, from theater to television, film, and merchandise all featuring the Nazi dictator. Critics are skeptical as to how the onslaught of media attention can educate without employing morbid titillation, creating a villain anti-hero or humanizing a murderer: “Hitler today is a thriving, world-wide industry and it is interesting, as well as disturbing, to note that there have been far more books, movies and TV programs produced about Hitler than Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill… ” The Age (Melbourne) 09/17/02
Monday September 16
VISA DELAYS IMPACT AMERICAN ARTS ORGANIZATIONS: US visa delays for foreign artists trying to get into the United States has disrupted the programs of many arts organizations and presenters in the past year. Now foreign artists who are members of American companies are having difficulty getting back into the country. “A coalition of national arts groups, led by the American Arts Alliance, has been talking to the Immigration and Naturalization Service since July about speeding up paperwork processing for visa petitions. They say they fear that the delays may deter international artists from participating in American arts productions, changing what one arts administrator called ‘the color of our culture’.” The News & Observer (Raleigh NC) 09/15/02
Sunday September 15
NEW DIRECTIONS IN BEANTOWN: Being an arts administrator in 2002 is a study in contradiction. On the one hand, the U.S. is in an economic slump, and conventional wisdom dictates that the arts must ride out such fiscal messes with hands folded in lap and mouth shut. But at the same time, many American cities are going through distinctive revitilizations in all kinds of ways, and any proponent of the arts would be foolish to sit on the sidelines while funding is doled out to sports, transit, and neighborhood programs. In Boston, three new arrivals are leading the charge to redefine the way the city’s arts organizations operate amidst various political and moneyed interests. Boston Globe 09/15/02
- DAMN THE TORPEDOES: It’s not just the traditional centers of the American arts world which are continuing to expand despite a national economic downturn. In Kansas City, arts administrators have refused to panic, and the result is a surprisingly progressive scene. “At the moment, the big local arts groups say they are financially stable, although in some cases their endowments have been whittled by the stock market decline that begin in the spring of 2000 and has wiped out more than $7 trillion in investments.” Kansas City Star 09/15/02
ART VS. EMERIL: In Britain, television is finally beginning to head down the lowbrow path blazed by American networks, with the consequence that the arts have all but lost any place on the airwaves. Where once there were three BBC programs dealing with literature, there are now none; where ‘arts’ programs once dealt with issues of classical music and architecture, today’s editions are little more than Entertainment Tonight-style fluff. So what has replaced high culture on the TV schedule? Why, cooking shows of course – just highbrow enough to suck in the disenfranchised arts crowd, and just lowbrow enough to appeal to the mass market in a way that, say, a debate over the Booker prize does not. The Guardian (UK) 09/14/02
Friday September 13
POOR COUNTRIES SHOULDN’T BE BOUND BY COPYRIGHT: A new study, released this week, says that “poor places should avoid committing themselves to rich-world systems of intellectual property rights protection unless such systems are beneficial to their needs.” Rich countries would argue that that is an invitation to piracy. But the report points out that “for most of the 19th century, America provided no copyright protection for foreign authors, arguing that it needed the freedom to copy in order to educate the new nation. Similarly, parts of Europe built their industrial bases by copying the inventions of others, a model which was also followed after the second world war by both South Korea and Taiwan. Today, developing countries do not have the luxury to take their time over IPR.” The Economist 09/13/02
THE PRICE OF ART: Wonder what people earn? The Fort Worth Star-Telegram did a survey of local professionals, including leaders of its arts institutions. While a museum director makes $200,000 and the local opera director $100,000, a principal dancer with the Dallas Fort Worth Ballet takes home $22,000. Fort Worth Star-Telegram 09/12/02
ENGORGED MISTAKE? China’s giant $24 billion Three Gorges dam is about 70 percent complete. “Almost 650,000 people have been moved, some 140,000 of them to other regions of China.” But there have been widespread reports of corruption on the project, and “environmentalists, scientists and archaeologists call the dam an expensive mistake. They say it will wreck the local environment, destroy cultural relics and be an economic drain.” The project is supposed to begin producing power next year. Yahoo! (AP) 09/10/02
Thursday September 12
COLORADO CRUNCH TIME: Colorado Governor Bill Owens swore he would cut the state’s budget across the board, but arts advocates say that this is no time for the guv to eliminate nearly 40% of the state arts board’s budget. Colorado already ranks 46th out 50 states in the U.S. in per capita arts funding, and the cuts would drop the state to 50th, unthinkable for a state with a major (and arts-intensive) metropolitan area such as Denver. Already, Denver-area arts groups are preparing to make drastic cuts in operations, and possibly to shut down altogether. Denver Post 09/12/02
COMMON ART, COMMON LANGUAGE? An Italian scholar claims to have deciphered 30,000-year-old rock drawings and says that “since there are so many visual similarities among prehistoric rock art around the world, it’s likely that a kind of ‘primordial mother language,’ existed as Homo sapiens were getting under way ‘from which all the spoken languages developed’.” Discovery 09/11/02
Wednesday September 11
COMFORT FOOD OR LACK OF IDEAS? Critics and artists seem lately to be focusing on the past. Is it a wave of nostalgia? A search for the comfortably familiar? A turn to conservatism? Some say “audiences are hungering for cultural comfort food in a post-9/11 world. But some cultural critics argue that the trend is symptomatic of a deeper problem: today’s commercial artists have a shallowly cynical view of the world, which drives critics to tout the aesthetic ambitions of the past.” The New York Times 09/11/02
WHAT ART CAN DO: What’s a rational response to something like 9/11? Perhaps art. The urge to want to do something, to not feel useless, to mount a creative response in the face of something so hard to understand… ArtsJournal.com 09/11/02
Tuesday September 10
HAND-ME-DOWN ART: There has been a rash of plagiarism this year, with several high-profile cases in books and music. “But what happens when the plagiarism is inadvertent? Maybe it’s impossible to come up with anything wholly new. That’s the quandary of the postmodern age: In culture, as in matters of the environment, we have to recycle. Certainly it pays to do so.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/10/02
MIAMI DELAY: Miami’s new performing arts center, scheduled to open in the fall of 2004, might have its opening delayed by a year. The project is facing construction delays, and rather than rushing to meet the opening deadline, officials want to take their time. “We want to take time and be fully prepared for the opening. We saw what happened in Philadelphia when the Kimmel Center [for the Performing Arts] opening was rushed to completion. There were a lot of unfavorable reactions that might have been avoided.” Miami Herald 09/07/02
APOLLO PULLS BACK: Harlem’s Apollo Theatre has been enjoying a revival in recent years. The theatre hoped to capitalize on that with plans for a big performing arts complex expansion. But late last week the theatre canceled the plans, and the head of the theatre’s foundation resigned. “Executives of the Apollo Theater Foundation cited the poor economic climate as the reason for delaying the plan, which was still in the early stages. Instead, they said, they would concentrate on a renovation of the theater, which is already under way.” The New York Times 09/10/02
BUILD IT AND WHO WILL COME? After years of dreaming, Chicago is building a new 1,500-seat theatre downtown for the city’s mid-size arts groups. “The 1,500-seat underground theatre now under construction—designed by Thomas Beeby as part of Millennium Park and scheduled to open in November 2003—should fulfill many dreams. Yet, just at this moment of triumph, some insiders are starting to ask, Who exactly is going to use this theatre?” Chicago Magazine 09/09/02
Monday September 9
ENTRY DENIED (OR UNREASONABLY DELAYED): Getting international artists into the US with proper visas has become chaotic and unpredictable. The average wait for a visa is four months, and US presenters can’t count on their artists being able to show up to perform. “A combination of broad-brush regulation and bureaucratic insensitivity has caught many artists and impresarios in a net that was supposed to block out terrorists.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/09/02
SCOTS DEBATE ARTS FUNDING: Should funding of culture be one of the Scottish government’s central functions? As the country debates the issue, a new survey asks Scots about their support for funding. It finds that “82 per cent said central government should support the arts, while 96 per cent said cultural activities gave them personal pleasure. The arts enriched the quality of life according to 83 per cent of respondents and a similar proportion said they represented good value for money.” The Scotsman 09/09/02
Sunday September 8
SACRAMENTO SLASH: “California Arts Council officials say the state’s new budget, sealed Thursday with Gov. Gray Davis’ signature, means their agency’s support for artists and arts organizations statewide will drop roughly 40%–from $28 million last year to $16.4 million in the 2002-03 fiscal year… However, the state’s spending plan shelters the largest single recipient of California Arts Council money, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which for the last few years has been getting $2 million in state money to support its “tools for tolerance” education program.” Los Angeles Times 09/07/02
SEEKING A FULL PLATE: In 1997, Minnesota introduced a special “Critical Habitat” license plate. For an additional $30, residents get a designer plate for their cars, and the state’s Department of Natural Resources gets the extra cash for its various projects around the state. The program has been wildly successful, with well over a million dollars going to the DNR every year from the plates. So why not try it with the arts? “Let’s say that just 1 percent of the 3.3 million Minnesotans who saw an arts event last year purchased a Critical Arts license plate, and that they renewed that plate annually. That would represent almost a million dollars in new state money every year for the arts. All without raising taxes a nickel.” Saint Paul Pioneer Press 09/08/02
Thursday September 5
THE HEAVY SCOTTISH FOG: This summer’s Edinburgh Fringe was a roaring success. “But art in Edinburgh is a flimsy frock, shucked off on the first of September for sensible tweeds. There will be no more frippery for the next 11 months. When the festival started in 1947, it was hoped that its light would spread around the year and across the nation – a dream that, for half a century, edged rosily towards realisation.” But in the past five years, Scottish arts institutions have fallen apart – and there appears no easy cure. London Evening Standard 09/04/02
PROCEEDING WITH CAUTION: A new performing arts center set to debut in St. Louis next year is going ahead with plans to open on schedule, despite increasing evidence that the money to operate the PAC may not be there. The project, which is on the campus of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, has been known to be in trouble for some time, and consultants have determined that the center will not be able to pay for its own upkeep on a year-to-year basis. The university is hoping that the state government will bail it out to the tune of $1 million a year in operating costs, but there is no indication that the legislature will cooperate. Saint Louis Post Dispatch 09/02/02
Wednesday September 4
ARTISTIC REMOVE: What should be art’s role in remembering 9/11? “Even at the slight remove of a year, we can begin to sense that white- hot mix cooling, settling and taking on deeper colors. If we need journalists to write the first draft of history and historians to interpret and polish, artists are the ones who come along in time to read the story back to us with hues and shades we never quite apprehended.” San Francisco Chronicle 09/04/02
POET TO LEAD GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION: The Guggenheim Foundation has named poet Edward Hirsch as its new president. Guggenheim fellowships, handed out by the foundation, are one of the American art world’s great prizes for artists, scholars and scientists. “This year it awarded $6,750,000 to 184 winners, selected from more than 2,800 applicants.” Hirsch’s appointment is said to be a departure: “I can’t think of any other time when a widely celebrated poet or novelist has taken on this kind of foundation position. It is an important moment in American cultural history.” The New York Times 09/03/02
Tuesday September 3
THE WORLD’S NEW ART CAPITALS: “Driven out by the high rents of cities like Paris and London, and aided by technology and the growing ease of travel, more artists and thinkers are congregating in smaller, far-flung communities around the world. In recent years new kinds of creative laboratories have emerged—in small university towns like Austin, Texas, and Antwerp, Belgium, in the impoverished neighborhoods of Marseilles, France, and Gateshead, England.” Newsweek 09/02/02
- THE NEW JET SET: Here’s where the really hot art is being made – in Tijuana. And Austin. And Kabul. The world’s eight new arts Meccas… Newsweek 09/02/02
- IN THE COMPANY OF KABUL (HEADY STUFF!): Newcastle-Gateshead, in Northern England gets a boost from the Newsweek mention as it bids to become European capital of culture in 2008. “Civic leaders are delighted at joining other ‘funky towns’ on a list which might be described by outsiders as surprising, not to say eccentric.” The Guardian (UK) 09/03/02
LANGUAGE OF ART – NOT BUSINESS: Why must the arts be such a business? Because we treat them that way? “”The language of government policy towards the arts does not recognise their special nature, but treats them as if they were no different from any other economic sector. It is no accident that museums, galleries and theatres are rolled up by government ministers into the one economic/industrial category – ‘the creative industries’. At a single stroke, the one word, the single idea that might have given the arts a distinctive right to exist – ‘creativity’ – has been taken away, democratised (or popularised), generalised to the point of meaninglessness, and awarded to anyone who can string two words or two lines together.” Here’s a list of Commandments to bring art back from the brink of commerce. Spiked 08/29/02
MINORITY OPINION: Should critics belonging to a minority group be expected to have a special response or affinity to art from their “home” culture? “It’s an old dilemma: Minority journalists have long faced pressure to show their loyalty to their ethnic group more than to their profession.” Los Angeles Times 09/01/02
Sunday September 1
ART VS. PROFIT: When exactly did it become an incontrovertible truth that arts organizations should be run like for-profit businesses? Certainly no one would argue that a dose of fiscal sanity and even occasional conservatism is no bad thing in the service of art, but recently, there seems to be a general assumption that art should pay its own way or hit the road. And that, says Peter Dobrin, is a dangerous philosophy. “Marketing teams are now part of the artistic planning process from the inception of an idea, weighing in on whether repertoire will win audiences. No surprise that programming has grown conservative. The spirit of daring at the Opera Company of Philadelphia can’t be heard amid the din of a march from Carmen.” Philadelphia Inquirer 09/01/02
EVERYWHERE YOU WANT TO BE: The stringent post-9/11 restrictions on international travel by foreigners wishing to enter the U.S. have taken their toll on this summer’s biggest arts and music festivals. Dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, a renowned pianist from Georgia (the country, not the state,) and a popular Celtic folk band were denied visas and had to cancel U.S. performances for reasons which the government declines to explain. Festival administrators are furious, but they appear to have little recourse against a security system which borders on the threatening for anyone who questions its methods. Andante (AP) 08/31/02